Energy crises are rarely just energy crises. They are stress tests—of policy, of foresight, of how well an economy has insulated itself from decisions made in distant capitals and conflict zones. The current instability in West Asia is one such test. For an economy still significantly tethered to imported oil and gas, the consequences are familiar: inflationary pressure, rising input costs, a current account that bleeds quietly before it bleeds loudly.
The question India must now ask is not how to manage the next shock. It is how to make the one after that irrelevant.
The answer lies not in renewables alone—though solar and wind will form the backbone of what comes next. It lies in the layer above generation: storage, and a new class of fuels. Specifically, green hydrogen and green ammonia. Green hydrogen is produced by splitting water using renewable electricity. Green ammonia takes this further: hydrogen combined with nitrogen to create a compound that is easier to handle than hydrogen alone, and already deeply embedded in the world’s fertiliser supply chains. These are not aspirational technologies. They are the difference between a renewable energy system that works and one that simply exists.
Here is the core problem with electrification as a complete strategy: it doesn’t reach everything. Steel, fertilisers, refining, aviation, shipping—these sectors run on high-temperature heat, chemical feedstocks, and energy-dense fuels. You cannot run a blast furnace on a grid connection. You cannot decarbonise a fertiliser plant with a solar panel. These sectors need something else, and green hydrogen is that something else.
Green ammonia compounds this logic. India already produces and consumes ammonia at scale—primarily for agriculture. Transitioning that production to green inputs is not a distant ambition; it is a near-term industrial imperative. And ammonia’s properties as a hydrogen carrier—easier to store, transport and trade than hydrogen itself—open a second door: export. As the world scrambles for low-carbon energy carriers, countries with abundant renewables and existing ammonia infrastructure will be positioned well. India is one of them, if it moves.
Industrial decarbonisation via green hydrogen and green ammonia is not simply a climate obligation—it is a risk management strategy. India’s most energy-intensive sectors currently carry a double exposure: to the price volatility of imported fossil fuels, and to the carbon costs that global trade frameworks are beginning to impose. Green hydrogen addresses the first by substituting domestically produced clean energy for imported feedstocks. Green ammonia addresses both simultaneously—cutting fossil dependence in fertiliser production while opening access to premium export markets that will increasingly price in carbon. Taken together, they reduce the surface area of India’s industrial economy that is vulnerable to external shocks and replace it with something more durable: production anchored in domestic renewables, insulated from geopolitical turbulence, and aligned with the direction of global trade.
The storage argument is equally important, and less discussed than it should be. The fundamental vulnerability of a high-renewable grid is temporal mismatch—the sun and wind are indifferent to peak demand. Batteries and pumped hydro manage the hours. Hydrogen manages the seasons. Surplus renewable electricity, converted to hydrogen, stored, and redeployed—this is what system resilience actually looks like. Not just capacity. Architecture.
India’s industrial economy depends on getting this right. The sectors that hydrogen can clean up—steel, fertilisers, refining—are not peripheral. They are central to growth, to exports, to the jobs that actually matter at scale. As carbon considerations embed themselves in global trade frameworks, the choice between early adoption and late compliance is also a choice about competitiveness.
But a word of discipline is warranted. Hydrogen is increasingly positioned as a universal solvent—a solution for every problem in the energy transition. It is not. Its value is specific: hard-to-abate sectors where electrification cannot reach. Deploying it where direct electrification would work better is wasteful and expensive. The policy and investment choices India makes in the next five years will either sharpen hydrogen’s impact or dilute it.
There is also the question of who captures the value. Building a hydrogen economy on imported electrolysers and foreign technology licensing is not energy independence; it is energy dependence with a green label. India must build domestic capability—in manufacturing, in engineering, in project development—with the same seriousness it brought to the solar scale-up. The costs come down when you build at home. The strategic leverage accumulates when you own the stack.
Historically, energy disruptions have been catalysts. The shocks of the 1970s reordered global industrial strategy. More recent crises accelerated renewable deployment in ways that years of policy advocacy had not. This moment has the same potential—but only if it is treated as an inflection point, not an inconvenience to be managed until oil prices stabilise.
India has the renewable resource base, the industrial scale, the domestic market, and increasingly the policy ambition to lead this transition rather than follow it. What has sometimes been missing is the urgency that transforms ambition into irreversible commitment.
That urgency is now available. The question we must answer affirmatively is that the moment it represents is realised.
(The author is Chief Advisor-India, Environmental Defense Fund. Views are personal.)
